


One in a Million

by kaliawai512



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Almost everyone is dead, Alternate Universe - Inktale (Undertale), Angst, Brotherly Love, Gen, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Ink is a Jerk, Past Character Death, Post-Undertale Neutral Route - Leaderless Ending, Post-Undertale Pacifist Route, Undertale Anniversary, Undertale Neutral Route, at first, everything here is platonic by the way, he does good things but he's definitely a jerk, he has no soul, references many other AUs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-15
Updated: 2018-09-15
Packaged: 2019-07-11 05:19:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15965537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaliawai512/pseuds/kaliawai512
Summary: Everyone he loves is dead. The souls have disappeared. The human is gone. Hisbrotheris gone. There is nothing left, and Sans is ready to spend the rest of his life just waiting for his soul to shatter.At least, he was, until a weirdo skeleton with a paintbrush barges in.(Written for Undertale's third anniversary.)





	One in a Million

**Author's Note:**

> Happy three years of Undertale, everyone!
> 
> I decided to do something a little different for this one. Aside from Handplates, I've never really touched the Undertale AUs before, though I'm quite aware of them. I love some, and ... am not so fond of others, and I won't say which here. But the fact is, I have _never_ seen this range of creativity in one fandom before in my life. Even if I don't personally enjoy everything that's come out of it, the fact that people have used Undertale as a springboard for so many unique ideas is really incredible. So this is my way of celebrating that, while also including my favorite skelebro angst/fluff.
> 
> This takes place after the Leaderless Neutral Route, where Sans is still alive, but all the other major characters, and a significant number of NPCs, have been killed. Not a very nice ending, to say the least.
> 
> To those who aren't familiar with Ink!Sans, details about him can be found [here](http://comyet.tumblr.com/post/132998265968/i-n-k-t-a-l-e) \- he was created by comyet/myebi and is definitely not mine. Basically, he can visit any AU he wants, and has no soul nor memories of where he came from. All of his emotions are simulated by the "paints" he keeps in little bottles. Think "artistic, colorful Flowey!Sans with less penchant for violence." (Credit to [Randomcat1832](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Randomcat1832/pseuds/Randomcat1832) for the metaphor - when I described him to her, she immediately compared him to Flowey.) His creator has said that he is "chaotic neutral" at best and can definitely be a jerk.
> 
> All other AUs are only vaguely referenced, but none of them belong to me either.
> 
> Thanks so much to everyone who's supported my work in this fandom, and thanks to Toby Fox for creating such an incredible game.

“so … this is the multiverse.”

The words came out before he even realized they had solidified in his head. He had been trying to think of something to say for the past five minutes. Ten minutes? Ten hours? He couldn’t tell. He wasn’t even sure if time passed normally here. He wasn’t even sure what time was anymore, or if it mattered. Maybe it didn’t. Either way, he had gone through at least a hundred different possibilities, and thrown each one out before it could form in his throat.

Then, apparently, his throat got tired of waiting for his brain and started up on its own.

He heard a long, thoughtful hum to his right, and turned just enough to see the skeleton standing beside him, making one of the weirdest expressions he had ever seen on another skull.

“Weeeeeeeeeell, not _technically,_ ” the guy said, shifting his shoulders like an alternating shrug. _“_ I mean, these are all doors to other universes, but it’s a … representation of the multiverse? Kind of? It’s complicated.”

“i can handle complicated,” Sans replied, again, without thinking at all.

Honestly, he wasn’t sure he _could_ handle complicated right now. Not this brand of complicated, at least, especially from someone he suspected wasn’t going to explain things in proper scientific terms.

This guy might have more first-hand knowledge of the multiverse than Sans had imagined someone could, but Sans doubted he had ever spent a day in a lab.

At least not without breaking a few expensive machines with that brush on his back.

Sans had never seen someone act so awkward and be so oblivious of it. It wasn’t awkwardness in the normal sense, where you don’t know what to say or do, and you try but you fail every time a word leaves your mouth, you try to plan your every move but every one comes out wrong. It was like waltzing into a funeral, singing a jaunty tune at the top of your lungs, then, after looking around and finding everyone staring at you, singing it even louder.

Maybe he hadn’t walked into an actual funeral. Those had been finished months ago—as many as they could, anyway. There had never been an official census of the underground, and there were far too many people lost to name them all, especially when all that was left behind was piles of dust scattered at random locations. Sometimes entire families, entire communities, had been wiped out, and even in close-knit places like Snowdin, no one could list everyone who had died.

Or maybe they just didn’t want to think about it. Sans couldn’t blame them for that.

But even with the funerals finished, the underground itself felt like a never-ending funeral, silent and blank and awkward and pained, with a quietness everyone held to even though there was no need. It felt wrong to talk, to run, to hum or laugh. It felt wrong to live when so many of them had died.

It was like living in a black and white photo, motionless and stoic.

And this guy had burst in like a splatter of bright paint, grinning and blabbering and shattering the silence like paper-thin glass.

“—and then we started arguing about the mechanics of inter-dimensional travel and he was just going on and on about this math stuff and I was trying to tell him to just _walk through_ but he had to _understand_ it first and it took him another _hour_ just to step in!”

Sans blinked and turned his head again, only to find a set of mismatched eyelights locked on him, wide and expectant, as if he had just finished a long, passionate rant and was waiting for some sort of validation.

Oh. Apparently this guy hadn’t stopped talking. Granted, he had done at least ninety percent of the talking since he had appeared out of that puddle in Waterfall, completely dry, with a goofy grin on his face and literal stars in his eyes.

Well, one of his eyes. The other one looked like a leaf or something. Sans wasn’t really paying attention.

He was far more concerned with the fact that the guy was a skeleton.

A skeleton who looked almost exactly like him.

Except for the clothes.

And the name, apparently—he had to repeat it three times before it sunk in.

And the eyelights. Sans knew it was technically possible for a skeleton’s eyelights to change shape, but he had never, ever seen anything like this.

Then again … it wasn’t like there were that many skeletons left.

And now … now there weren’t—

Except … there _were_ more. Weren’t there? There was one standing right beside him. And all those doors … there must have been hundreds, thousands, stretching out further than he had ever seen in the underground. It was what he imagined the surface looking like, wide and expansive and apparently endless. Except this wasn’t the surface. This was the multiverse. And every one of those doors …

He swallowed and met Ink’s eyes again.

“so … there’s other versions of my world,” he said, carefully, as if he were making it real with his words. “behind all those doors.”

Part of him expected Ink to be annoyed that he had completely ignored what he had said, but Ink didn’t even seem to notice. He just grinned.

“Yep!” Then he paused, his browbone furrowing in thought. Sans wasn’t sure how a skeleton could pout without lips, but somehow, Ink managed it. “Well, kind of. Some of them are almost exactly like your world, just with a couple differences. Like who exactly died, different choices the human made, stuff like that. There’s loads of universes like that. Then there are the ones that start out totally different from your world. Well, not _totally_ different. Well, _some_ of them are totally different. Some of them only change a few things and some of them you probably wouldn’t even recognize. Like in some of them your personality is swapped with Papyrus’s, and in this other one you’re both kind of jerks, well, you act like jerks, sometimes you really are jerks and sometimes you just act like jerks, and sometimes you live on the surface and sometimes you live in a different time period and sometimes you’re a kid and in one you’re an immortal god and—”

“what about you?”

Again, Ink didn’t even seem to notice he’d been interrupted. He tilted his head. “Huh?”

“you look like me,” Sans said, doing his best to keep his voice from shaking, even as his mind struggled to comprehend everything Ink had said. “are you another version?”

Ink looked at him for a long, long while. Or at least it felt like a long, long while. Sans still wasn’t sure whether time was as … quantifiable here as it was in his world. And it hadn’t even been very quantifiable there in the first place.

Finally, Ink shrugged.

“I dunno,” he said, with the carelessness he might have used to say he didn’t know his favorite color. “Maybe. Probably. That’s the theory I’m going on. But I don’t really know. First thing I remember was waking up in this place. Only it was a lot more … empty, then. Not as much color. It’s way more fun now!”

His eyelights changed shape again, one of them shifting into a pale pink heart, as he turned his head back and forth, appreciating the sights around him. Sans found himself following his gaze. It was … beautiful, if he could stop thinking about what it _was_ for a second. Green and bright and painfully alive. Green grass stretching as far as the eye could see.

And doors. So many doors.

Sans wondered, for the first time, whether Ink had created this place himself. Or at least … decorated it. He had used that brush on his back to open a portal here. Maybe that was what his magic did. Made things. It would certainly be fitting.

Even if the idea of someone having that much power still made his chest twist.

“and your papyrus?” he found himself asking, without even thinking about it. But as soon as it was out, he realized the question had been sitting in the back of his mind for a while, poking at him like a small child, desperate for attention but unable to get it, because all the adults were too distracted.

Ink snapped his head back to him, blinking a few more times, his eyelights shifting with each one. He stared again, blank rather than thoughtful, like his gaze was locked onto something even he couldn’t fully see.

Then he shrugged, even more carelessly than before.

For a second, Sans wanted to kill him.

But he didn’t have enough energy to feel that way for more than a second, so he didn’t.

They went back to silence for a few more minutes—or thirty minutes, or an hour, or a few seconds or a few days, it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. None of this mattered. He had the entire multiverse spread out in front of him, answers to questions even he had barely dared to ask in all his time in the lab, and none of it _mattered._

Everything that mattered was already gone.

He tried to imagine everyone he knew standing here with him. Seeing this. What would they think, seeing such a wide, open expanse, more than any of them had ever seen in their lives? Undyne would be challenging herself to race to the end of it, probably dragging Papyrus into it with her, and they would run and run, always thinking they were close to the end, unable to believe that it might go on forever. Alphys … Alphys would be like that quiet part of him, trying to figure out how it all worked, how it fit into what they knew about science and how it shattered everything they assumed. Asgore … Sans might not know him well, but he could already imagine the king with tears in his eyes, soaking in the beauty of the grass, the flowers, the intricate doors, the scattered islands levitating above the ground. The sky.

And the lady behind the door … he didn’t know. They had never talked about the surface before. She had never expressed that same desperation to get out as so many monsters did. He wasn’t sure if he would say she was happy, or even content, but … she was content with _where_ she was, at least. Even if the Ruins sounded so small and cramped to him.

She had said she was old. Or … maybe not said it, but it was clear from the way she talked, commenting on things that had happened far before Sans was born. He didn’t know many monsters who had lived during the war, who had seen the surface and knew what it was really like. He had never thought to ask her whether or not she had herself.

There were a lot of things he hadn’t thought to ask her.

Somehow, even with the disruption in the timelines, even with the overwhelming knowledge that something was very, very wrong, he had never thought he would live to regret it.

He looked around the expanse of grass and islands and doors, and imagined all the monsters of his world living here. Safe. Happy. Maybe it wasn’t the same as living on the surface, but … it would be better than the underground.

It would be better than being dust scattered by a human kid, mixing with the snow or the dirt or the stone, never identified, never given a proper goodbye.

He looked at Ink, standing there, grinning to himself, as if he had just remembered a funny joke. He looked out at all these doors, all these _universes,_ with the sort of familiarity that suggested he knew each one by heart. Like he had poked his head in on all of them, witnessed all the different ways things might have played out.

All the ways things could have gone wrong.

Something in Sans twisted, tight and pained.

“so you can go into any of these universes, any time you want.”

Ink snapped his head toward him, blinking for a second before giving him another painfully chipper grin.

“Yep!”

“and you can change things,” Sans went on, and he didn’t even try to hold back the accusation dripping from his words. “you know what’s gonna happen, and you can change things.”

Ink stared at him for another long second. His smile slipped—didn’t disappear all the way, but slipped to almost nothing. He looked back at Sans, eyes unreadable, fixed in one position for what felt like an eternity before he blinked, and they changed again.

“I couldn’t have saved them, Sans.” His voice was calm, even, casual despite the fact that he _knew_ what Sans was implying. “I’m not supposed to change things.”

Sans grit his teeth. “i don’t give a damn what you’re _supposed_ to—”

“Yours isn’t the worst universe out there,” Ink cut him off, and as much as Sans wanted to strangle him for it, he found himself going silent, his words dying in his throat before they could fully form. Ink’s face was as blank as he had seen it yet. “There are a lot more where you lost your friends. Some where even more people died. Some where all your lives were already worse than death.”

Ink tilted his head, looked at him a little closer, and for a second Sans felt like he could see himself reflected in those nonsensical eyes, in a thousand different forms. A thousand different universes.

“A lot where you died, too.”

He said it with the same tone he had used for everything else. Not as cheerful, but … very normal. There was no weight to it. No threat. No pain.

He said it like he had watched Sans die a thousand times, and he didn’t care.

And Sans was pretty sure he didn’t.

And why would he? If he could see all of it from here, visit all of those universe but not belong to any of them, if he knew a thousand versions of the same person, then why _would_ he care? If he had seen every possibility, if he had seen the worst of the worst and could see it and leave it at any time …

If he could drop into any universe for a visit, but wasn’t supposed to _change_ anything …

If he could pluck someone out of what was left of their life and show them all of this …

“so why me?” he asked, snapping himself out of his thoughts so suddenly it almost made him dizzy. “why’d you pick me?”

Ink gave him a curious look. Curious, interested, but not invested. Sans could probably start throwing attacks, breaking things left and right, and Ink would just stand there and watch.

He shrugged again. If Sans never saw someone shrug again in his life, it would be too soon.

“I dunno. I just picked a door,” Ink said, tilting his head the other way. “Your universe wasn’t gonna change or anything. Abandoned, probably. Player got bored. No more resets, I’m pretty sure, so it wasn’t really against the rules to take you out of it. Probably bending them a little, but not breaking them. And bending’s okay! Well … usually!”

He smiled, laughing a little, as if at a joke only he could understand. Sans got the sudden feeling that the fact of him standing here was breaking some grand universal law, but frankly, he didn’t care. The universe had screwed him over enough already, and it felt kinda nice to get back at it.

He looked around at the doors again, letting his mind fall, just for a second, into the feeling of incomprehension, the sense that no matter how hard he tried, he would never be able to understand how incredibly vast this world really was.

“how many are there?” he found himself asking, not even sure if he meant to address Ink. “universes?”

Of course, Ink didn’t care whether or not Sans was addressing him. He made a thoughtful face, with that pout that he really shouldn’t have been able to make without lips.

“I never counted. Waaaaaaay too many to do that!” he replied with a slight laugh. “But there are hundreds of AUs, at least, and then there’s all the variations of each AU, whether it’s pacifist or neutral or genocide, and then some where the human doesn’t exist so it doesn’t really matter. I’m not really a math person, but that’s gotta mean millions in total. And then there’s the unfinished AUs, and I don’t even know how to start counting those.”

Sans turned his head to look at Ink in full. He had said it as if it were the most normal thing in the world, which was probably why Sans took a few seconds to realize how _wrong_ it sounded. The words ran around a few times in his head, spinning in circles, bouncing around the insides of his skull, before they finally settled in.

He blinked.

“ _unfinished_ aus?”

Ink hummed. “Yeah, the ones creators are still finishing, or the ones they gave up on.”

“what do you mean, ‘creators’?”

Ink smiled at him, somewhere between friendly and condescending, like he knew that Sans couldn’t have possibly known what he was talking about, but it was still somehow both cute and stupid that he didn’t.

“The people who come up with the AUs!”

Sans blinked again. And again. And then one more time, just for good measure.

“you mean like … a god or something?”

He had never been very interested in religion. Some monsters believed in the Angel, and maybe that counted as religion, and he knew it mattered a lot to certain humans, based on the books he’d read. But it didn’t interest him. He couldn’t study it in a lab, and it had never affected his life in any sort of measurable way, and therefore it wasn’t worth his time.

Ink hummed for a few seconds, apparently thinking it over, before shrugging again.

“Well, ‘god’ is kinda relative,” he said at last. “If someone creates your whole world and controls everything that’s ever happened to you, you’d probably see them as a god, but in their mind, they might just be a regular person, making stuff up in their head.”

Sans’s eyesockets were beginning to hurt from all this blinking.

“are you saying we’re all just in someone’s head?”

Ink’s eyes lit up, and he put a finger to his chin, staring up at the sky.

“Oh, that reminds me of a really good Harry Potter quote … what was it again …?”

“ink,” Sans bit out, his voice sharper than he had intended. Ink looked back to him. Sans breathed a slow, careful breath. “are we all just in someone’s head?”

Ink made a sound like he was going to answer. Then he stopped. He started again, then stopped, then paused for what felt like an unnecessarily long time.

“… kind of?” he managed, in a tone that might have sounded apologetic if Sans had felt like Ink actually cared. “It gets kinda philosophical. Or _really_ philosophical. So I don’t really think about it that much. It’s way more fun to just enjoy it all!”

He smiled that innocent, infuriating smile. Sans wished he had the energy to hate him.

Ink chuckled and shrugged again.

“Besides, even if we started just in someone’s head, we’re more than that now. Especially if they put the AU out there for other people to enjoy. Then all the other people get it in their heads and add to it and change things and then it becomes something brand new! And when you exist in so many people’s heads, you’re plenty real!”

Sans’s world was spinning. For a split second, he was sure it was _really_ spinning. He didn’t belong here, he wasn’t supposed to be here, wasn’t supposed to see this, _hear_ this, and this world knew it and it was going to throw him right off into the abyss. Then the spinning stopped, and Sans wished more than anything that he could throw himself out instead.

“and it doesn’t bother you?” he asked, quiet, despite the storm clouding his thoughts, tilting his center of balance. “that someone invented your whole life? that someone invented _you_? that someone else controls everything that happens to you, controls everything that happens to everyone that you ever knew, that someone can tear it all away just cause they were _bored_? that someone else you don’t know can destroy everything you know just cause they _felt_ like it?”

He was panting now, his arms shaking, and everything that had been building inside of him was forcing its way out, ready to blow him up from the inside. And Ink just looked at him, the same as he had this whole time. As if it didn’t matter. As if _he_ didn’t matter. As if he were watching a movie play out, curious about what would happen, maybe even engaged in the outcome. But just watching a movie.

A movie he could walk away from anytime he liked.

He hummed and shrugged one more time.

“Eh. I guess if you think about it _that_ way, sure, it sounds bad.”

Sans really couldn’t imagine any other way to think about it, and he started to say so, the words pressing at the back of his teeth like an overfilled whoopee cushion about to burst.

Then he stopped.

And he looked at Ink again.

He looked at him, and he tried, just for a second, to imagine himself in his place.

It wasn’t as hard as he would have thought. They looked almost identical at their most basic, even though their clothes and expressions and even their eyelights differed. If their lives had gone in different directions—if they had been born into different universes—they could easily have been each other. Rather than losing his friends, his _brother,_ in a random massacre, Sans could have never had them at all. He could have spent who knows how long alone in this god-like realm, looking down on worlds but never belonging to them. He could have come to see people as characters, acting out adventures for his entertainment, because to him, that was all they were.

Characters. Stories.

And if everyone he had ever known was just a character to him … then would it really have bothered him if he found out he was just a character, too?

If he had such power over everyone else’s lives … then would it have seemed so strange if someone else had that same control over him?

He didn’t know.

And if he was lucky, he never, ever would.

His shoulders slumped, his breath slipping past his teeth until he felt like an empty shell, ready to shatter at the slightest touch.

“what now?” he asked, sounding almost as tired as he felt.

Ink stiffened, eyes wide.

“Oh! I totally forgot! I was supposed to take you to the other door and I got distracted. It’s just so much fun seeing people’s faces the first time they see all the doors. Anyway, c’mon! This way!”

He turned, waving all the while, and started in a slow run down the hill they stood on, toward some of the other doors. Sans stood there for a second, staring, before he followed, as fast as he could manage. His legs ached almost immediately, and he thought about using shortcuts, but he wasn’t sure they would work here, and no matter how he felt right now, no matter how little he cared about what happened to him, he still didn’t want to find out where those shortcuts might take him.

Ink ran for a couple of minutes, bounding along like a rabbit on a coffee buzz, before finally skidding to a stop in front of one of the doors. It didn’t look any different to Sans—at least not in his current state of exhaustion. It was just a door, plain and brown, sitting there like someone had plucked it out of a room and sat it on a little grassy hill. But Ink smiled at it like he might look at a well-loved book plucked out the shelf, nodding once before he turned around to face Sans again.

He held out a hand toward the door, beaming wider than Sans knew his own face could hold.

“Well, this is your stop! Thanks for taking the Ink Express!”

“… what?” Sans managed, tugging the word out from the depths of his overtaxed head.

Ink paused for a second, staring at him, confused. Then his browbone shot up.

“Oh, right, I didn’t explain, did I?” He laughed, like he had picked up a banana instead of his keys. Then he smiled again. “This is your new world. Or, well … I guess it’s not _really_ your world. But it’s a hell of a lot better than the one you came from!”

He said it like a joke. Like Sans’s old world was an ugly painting rather than a graveyard, the very ground of it permanently mixed with the dust of slaughtered monsters. But Sans didn’t even have the energy left to be mad.

“All your friends are still alive here. On the surface, too!” Ink went on with that same casual tone, like he was reassuring him that Grillby’s still sold burgers. Sans didn’t feel his expression changing, but a few seconds later, Ink gave him a puzzled, amused look. “What’s that face for? I told you there were hundreds of different ways things could turn out! This is just one where nobody died!”

He paused, making that thoughtful face again.

“Well. Not in the underground, at least.”

Sans’s browbone furrowed, but Ink was shrugging and grinning again before he could even think of asking about it.

“Anyway, you should fit in just fine here. And Papyrus’ll be glad to see you.”

And just like that, Sans’s breath was in his throat. He tried to tell himself this was a joke, just a joke, this bastard didn’t give a damn about anyone and he was playing a cruel, sick joke. He didn’t have the energy to hope, to think that it might be true, because he didn’t have the energy to be disappointed when he found out it wasn’t. But he still felt something in his chest lift, faint and distant, no matter how hard he tried to shove it down.

“my brother’s there,” he said, hoping that saying it out loud would make him stop believing it, make him stop hoping, stop, just _stop,_ dammit, it would hurt so much more if he started hoping.

“Yep!” Ink replied, grinning just as wide as before. He paused, pouted in thought, then chuckled again. “Well. Kinda.”

There were really no words for how much Sans hated this guy.

But as much as a part of him tried to get him to speak up, to ask what the hell he meant, he didn’t. Maybe because he wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer.

He looked at the door. Back at Ink, back to the door. His hand lifted toward the knob, paused, then dropped down to his side again.

He could still go back. He wasn’t completely sure which door had been his, but he could convince Ink to take him back. Even if convincing involved threatening.

He _should_ go back. It wasn’t like he was the only survivor. There were others there, a handful that made up all that was left of the monster race. Sure, none of them were his close friend, except Alphys ... and he still wasn't sure what had happened to her. He hadn't seen evidence of her death, but she hadn't shown up once since everything ... but there were others. They would wonder what happened to him. After everything they had lost, every _one_ they had lost … how could he do that to them? How could he make them lose someone else? He couldn’t. He had to go back. He had to go back and … and …

And what?

Live out the rest of his days in a graveyard? Watch everyone succumb to their grief? Wait until his own soul cracked too much for him to repair, then leave the people that remained to watch him fall down and crumble into dust? Was that mercy, or cruelty? They would at least know what happened to him, sure, but …

How long would he even last, with everything he had lost?

How long would he last when he knew he had had a chance to get it all back, in whatever way, and he had given it up?

His hand twitched toward the doorknob again, but he stopped it midair and started down at it, watching it tremble in place.

“why did you do this?” The words fell past his teeth without his permission, pouring out even as he struggled to pull them back. He turned around, facing Ink with movements he didn’t control. “why did you take me out?”

Ink gave him that look again. That blank look that said so many things and nothing at all. There was still a faint smile on his teeth, and his eyes were a mismatched star and clover, but Sans felt like he was staring into a void. A void that covered itself in flowers and bright colors to pretend it held something worthwhile, but when you walked through it, you still plummeted into the abyss.

“I was curious.”

The voice came out like an echo, reaching out of the abyss and tapping him on the forehead. Sans blinked. Ink tilted his head.

“I never tried to combine worlds like this before, so I wanted to see what would happen,” he went on, as if it was the most normal thing in the world. Then he smiled, bright and painfully chipper, the veil of flowers blooming. “It’s turning out pretty interesting so far!”

He kept on smiling, and Sans repressed the shudder that tried to creep its way up his spine.

Then, before he could think better of it—before he could think of anything else he didn’t want answered—he turned around and stepped through the door.

His feet had barely touched the ground before he felt the door shut behind him. He turned around, ready to make a half-hearted joke about Ink wanting to get rid of him. But Ink wasn’t there. The door wasn’t there. There were just more trees, stretching out into the distance.

Sans knew he should be surprised. Maybe even scared. But he wasn’t.

Nothing could surprise him at this point, and as for being scared … well. What could be worse than what he had already seen?

So he just turned in the direction he had been facing before—probably—and started walking.

It was … slow work, to say the least. The forest was dense, and he tripped at least a couple times a minute, his feet catching on roots and twigs and random junk lying on the ground. But he kept going. It wasn’t like there was anything else he could do.

He kept going, and after some amount of time he didn’t even bother to estimate, he saw the trees thinning up ahead. There was something … bright behind them. Bright and … well. Really bright. He stepped a little faster, almost without realizing it, and in seconds he found himself stepping through the last of the trees and out onto a patch of grass, overlooking …

His eyes adjusted. He blinked a few times, his eyelights shrinking to make up for the amount of light pouring into them.

And then he saw it, shining stronger than he could have imagined, hanging in the middle of the sky like one of Mettaton’s disco balls, only so, _so_ much more.

The sun.

He had never seen it before, of course, and a tiny voice in his head pointed out that he couldn’t _really_ be sure this was it. But he had seen it in books too many times to keep doubting. Even if none of the drawings, none of the photos, came close to doing it justice. The light, almost blinding but so warm and overwhelming and _real_ that he couldn’t look away.

He had never felt the same desperation to get to the surface as other monsters, but … now. Now he understood.

He stood there for a couple of minutes, just taking it in. Then his mind reminded him why he was there.

And who he was there for.

He jerked his gaze away from the sun, blinking away the ache in his eyesockets, and turned to the hill in front of him. Or, rather, the side of the mountain. It was … a long, long way down to the city below. But it was his best bet, and as tired as he was, he didn’t really want to sleep out here.

Or … well, maybe … if he could bring a blanket and stay out long enough to see the stars …

He shook his head. _Later._

He started walking again, before he could talk himself out of it, before he could start dwelling on everything he had missed, everything he had never let himself imagine because he was so sure he would never get to see it. He walked faster than he had the energy for, ignoring the ache in his legs, ignoring the clock that ticked away in the back of his head, ignoring the little voice that tried to remind him that the surface was huge, and even if his brother _was_ here, somewhere, finding him was going to be a nightmare.

What if there was another version of him already here? Would that cause some paradox, or at least panic? What if he had never existed and his brother had no idea who he was? What if he had died years ago and Papyrus thought he was a hallucination and ran away as soon as he saw him?

What if Ink was wrong—what if he had _lied—_ and Papyrus wasn’t here at all?

What if all the other monsters were still stuck underground, and Sans would have to leave this brand new world behind and go back under the mountain to find them?

No matter how many times he shushed the voice, it still came back, louder and more persistent than ever.

By the time he reached the edge of the city, he had run over at least two hundred possibilities of what he might find, and only a couple of them were any semblance of good. But he never stopped walking, never slowed down, because as bad as the world ahead of him was, it was still something new. It was still something other than the graveyard he had come from.

But when he found himself approaching the first impossibly-tall building … when he stood maybe another five-minute walk from the town itself …

He stopped.

He tried to move his feet, but they stuck to the ground. He tried to tell himself there was no reason to wait, no reason to put off the inevitable, but he couldn’t make himself move.

The voice in his head was screaming now, and he couldn’t make himself ignore it. His old world was a graveyard, sure, but … at least it was his. At least he knew what was going on. At least he knew that the worst was over, at least he _knew_ everyone he loved was gone and he wouldn’t have to go through the pain of hoping, _believing_ that he could keep them. At least he knew that everything had gone to hell and he didn’t have to sit around waiting.

At least, whatever happened … he knew it wouldn’t get any worse.

But here … anything could happen. Sure, everything looked peaceful on the outside, but he could find anything in that town. If there were no monsters there yet, then he would be walking into a human city. A skeleton walking into a human city. He didn’t need to know much about humans to know that probably wouldn’t go over well.

And that wasn’t the worst. Then, he would just be dead. If he lived, he might see something worse. He might see what Ink had hinted at, those worlds that were supposedly even more miserable than his own.

If he went back, he wouldn’t have to see. He wouldn’t have to suffer anymore. He would just … live with the suffering he already had.

His legs trembled beneath him, and his soul pounded in his chest. What was he doing? He was an idiot. An absolute goddamn _idiot._ Had he really believed any of what that guy had told him? Just because he took him to another universe? Had he really believed that some random skeleton who looked like him could bring back his brother? Maybe this wasn’t even another universe. Maybe it was his own and the guy had just figured out a way to get onto the surface. Sans had already established that Ink didn’t give a damn about anyone around him. He was just doing this for entertainment. Maybe _that_ was his entertainment. Take a guy who had nothing, convince him that there was something out there worth living for, give him hope and then yank it out from under him. That would be funny, wouldn’t it? Funny to watch him believe it. Funny to see a guy find hope he didn’t know he still had, then lose it all over again, watch him cling to the tiniest possibility of regaining what he had lost, watch him do anything, follow anyone, just because he had a chance of getting to see his—

“SANS?”

At first, it didn’t even register.

He had heard that voice so many times, echoing in his head, a memory engraved into the inside of his skull. He had heard it so many times in all the dreams, the nightmares, he had had every time he managed to fall asleep. And he could still hear it when he woke up painting, stifling his voice in his throat when it wanted to cry out into the emptiness, the emptiness that would never be filled, never never _never_ again.

He stiffened. He blinked. And the voice soaked into him, like water into a dried-out sponge.

It took all the willpower, all the bravery, all the guts he didn’t even know he had left to turn around. But he did.

And he saw him.

Standing maybe ten steps away from him, staring, shaking, he saw his …

A little voice in the back of his head screamed that this wasn’t him. This wasn’t his Papyrus. His Papyrus was dead, dust, nothing but a scarf left sitting half-covered in snow by the time he found it abandoned on the edge of the town. He was gone. He was never coming back. The kid had left, they would never reset, and he was never coming back and _no one_ could replace him.

But the rest of him saw those wide sockets, glistening with tears, that carefully-shaped battle body, those hot pants, those boots, those gloves—new gloves, work gloves, dirty like he had been gardening, holding a little shovel in one hand, but the same bright red—the shaky line of his mouth, _that_ scarf—

And screamed louder than that little voice could ever dream.

“… bro?”

The word fell past his teeth before he even realized it was in his head.

And before the echo of it had faded away, a sob burst from Papyrus’s throat, and he threw himself forward, dropping the shovel, crossing the space between them and yanking Sans into a hug.

It was like being yanked down from a cloud and dropping, falling, plummeting through the air until you fell onto an even softer cloud. One that supported you just right, cradled every part of you better than anything else in the world, a cloud that held you and squeezed you and treasured you and warmed you and he could feel the tears on his head and his own tears mixing in with them, he could feel them both shaking and he couldn’t tell where one of them ended and the other began and it was the best thing he had felt in all his life.

He wrapped his arms around his brother’s thin spine, squeezing him for all he was worth, tighter than he would have thought his tired arms capable of. He had never felt more exhausted and more filled with energy, it hurt, it hurt so bad and it felt so good and it felt like he was going to explode and he never wanted to end. He could hear his own sobs in between his brother’s whimpering cries, and it shattered him from the inside out, but it was far more beautiful than any of his memories.

He was here. He was really here. He was here, he was safe, he was _alive_ and now they were together, they were both here on the surface, everything was going to be fine, they were together and he would never let go, never again, nothing else mattered, his brother was here and …

And …

Papyrus’s cries died down, and the silence, somehow, felt heavier than all the tears that had been weighing Sans down from the inside out. Because in the silence, Sans could finally hear the faint thrum of the soul so close to his, make out every detail of the beat he had memorized since he first held his baby brother in his arms.

Except … this soul beat wasn’t the same.

Similar. Painfully similar, almost identical, but … not the same.

“YOU’RE NOT MY BROTHER … ARE YOU?”

The arms around him didn’t so much as shift, even as the words threatened to crack Sans right down the middle.

His own grip loosened, almost without him realizing, and as his arms fell to his sides, Papyrus let him go, a little reluctantly, and stepped back to look at him. Sans tilted his head up, meeting the eyes of his …

But he wasn’t.

He had known that, of course. He had known that from the moment he stepped through that door.

And for a second, one beautiful, horrible second, it hadn’t mattered.

He swallowed the lump in his throat and lowered his gaze.

“no.”

Papyrus stared back at him, his face more distant, more unreadable, yet somehow more raw than Sans had ever seen it.

“MY BROTHER DIED,” he said, with a slight tremble to his voice that Sans got the feeling had once been much bigger. Papyrus’s eyes lowered. “HE WAS … HURT. THERE WAS A FIGHT WITH HUMANS … THEY WEREN’T HAPPY WHEN WE CAME HERE, AT FIRST. THEY … THEY TRIED TO HURT US. ONE OF THEM WANTED TO HURT ME. I TRIED TO TELL THEM THAT WE WANTED TO BE FRIENDS, BUT THEY WERE NOT READY TO ACCEPT MY FRIENDSHIP AND ONE OF THEM PULLED OUT A … GUN AND HELD IT TOWARD ME, AND SANS … HE …”

He trailed off. His breath hitched for a second, but just a second, and he didn’t cry. Sans found himself imagining what his brother looked like, crying. Then he remembered that he would never see his brother cry again. Or smile. Or laugh. Or tell him off for leaving his sock on the floor. Or go on about puzzles, or spar with Undyne, or … or …

Sans swallowed again.

“a human killed my brother, too.”

He waited for Papyrus to ask how, or why, or who the human was. But he didn’t.

And for the first time, Sans found himself thinking back to the things Ink had said about the different versions of each universe. Pacifist. Neutral. Genocide. And he said all of them were based on the human.

Not _a_ human. _The_ human.

The human who had fallen into the underground.

The human who had slaughtered almost everyone he knew.

The human who, in another world, in _this_ world … had hurt no one.

And if they were on the surface, if they had gotten to the surface without Asgore going through with his plan … if they were genuinely trying to live in peace with humans … then the human, the _kid,_ had had something to do with it. They had helped. They spared everyone, _saved_ everyone.

They had made a different choice, and that choice had changed everything.

It was the same kid. But … it wasn’t. The kid in his world was a murderer. The kid in this world was a savior.

And if the kid could be so different, could seem exactly the same but turn the world upside down because of a few tiny changes … then how did he ever think that this Papyrus would be anything like his own?

How did he ever think that he could step into the place of his brother?

“I KNOW YOU AREN’T SANS.”

The words didn’t hit as hard as they had before, but Sans still flinched as they reached him, and he stared at the ground for a second longer. Then he swallowed past his fear, past the growing ache in his chest, past the solidifying knowledge that this was no more his home than any of the other universes stretched out across that infinite span of doors, and forced his head up.

But there was no accusation in Papyrus’s eyes. No condemnation or judgment. Not even resignation.

Sans didn’t have a name for what he saw on his not-brother’s face. It was soft, and loving, and hurting, more than Sans had ever seen Papyrus hurt before.

“BUT YOU LOOK LIKE HIM,” Papyrus went on, tilting his head as his eyes widened, as if to take in all of Sans that he could. “YOU LOOK SAD. LIKE HE DID.”

Sans could feel the words forming, the excuses, the denial, the things he had said every time his brother caught him looking more than just tired. He felt the words, but before they could slip past his teeth, he stopped them.

Because this wasn’t his brother.

This wasn’t his Papyrus.

He had made excuses, denied, _lied_ to protect his brother from pain. And he had failed.

And this Papyrus … this Papyrus had already been through more pain than Sans’s own hidden moods would be able to cause.

Now that he looked closer, he could see the differences. The new lines in his face, like the bone had been stuck in a frown too long. The white of his skull a little less bright. And his eyes, once so sunny and hopeful even when he was so overwhelmingly alone, had never looked quite so empty.

He looked … older.

Like he had aged more in the past few months than in the past ten years.

Sans wondered if he would have seen the same thing if he looked in the mirror.

He wondered if this was what his brother had seen after he realized what was happening to the timelines, and how helpless he was to stop it. He wondered, and he almost started to ask, but then—

But then he remembered.

He looked at the skeleton standing in front of him, dressed in the same battle body he had helped make what felt like an eternity go, and he felt his world collapse around him as his eyes dropped back to the ground.

“my brother’s not coming back,” he breathed, the words slipping from his soul without bothering to check in with his mind.

“NO,” Papyrus said, simple and matter of fact, so raw that it made Sans shiver. “I DON’T THINK MY BROTHER IS COMING BACK EITHER.”

The air hung between them, thick and suffocating, and as hard as Sans swallowed, he couldn’t get the lump to leave his throat.

“BUT WE ARE HERE.”

Sans looked up. It was like lifting a rock over his head, but he did it, and stared up at Papyrus with wide, baffled eyes. Papyrus’s mouth trembled, but he smiled, and even though it looked nothing like the smile Sans was used to, it still made something warm and familiar settle into his chest.

“I DON’T KNOW HOW YOU GOT HERE, OR WHERE YOU CAME FROM, BUT … YOU ARE HERE. AND I AM HERE. AND … I DO NOT LIKE THE IDEA OF LEAVING YOU, NOW THAT I’VE FOUND YOU.”

Sans tried to reply, but the words caught under the lump in his throat. He swallowed again, harder than before, and this time the ball began to budge.

“you aren’t him,” he muttered, his voice old and raspy and weak.

“NO, I’M NOT,” Papyrus replied, and it was just as matter of fact as before, but somehow it was just as comforting as the smile. Papyrus paused, looking down at his feet before returning his eyes to Sans, his smile shaky, but a little bit wider. “WOULD YOU LIKE TO COME TO MY HOUSE? MY FRIEND FRISK IS SLEEPING OVER, BUT THERE IS PLENTY OF ROOM, AND WE WILL BE COOKING DELICIOUS DINNER SPAGHETTI. THE QUEEN HERSELF GAVE ME COOKING LESSONS! SHE … SHE HAS BEEN COMING OVER A LOT SINCE …”

His voice cracked and trembled, and for a second Sans thought he might cry. But he didn’t. Of course he didn’t. Sans could suddenly see him in his head, sobbing for hours until he ran out of tears, until he realized that crying no longer helped. His smile still trembled, and his eyes gleamed, but he looked at Sans, steadfast and strong, waiting for him to respond.

And as Sans looked back at him, he could already feel his answer forming inside his mouth.

“okay.”

Papyrus’s smile widened, just enough to see. Then he turned around and started back toward the city, and Sans found his feet moving to follow, drawn by a force he didn’t need to name or understand.

He didn’t know if this would last, or if it would even be anything worth keeping. He didn’t know what was going to happen. He had never had much control over his own life, and now, he knew that he never could have had any to begin with. He wasn’t making his life. He was living in someone else’s world—literally—under someone else’s thumb, and if they got bored, if they decided that this story wasn’t good enough, and they wanted something more _interesting_ …

But …

Even if this wouldn’t last … he had it. For now, even if it was just for now, he had it.

And if there was one thing he had learned from this whole mess, it was to never miss a chance to appreciate what you had while it lasted.

He looked ahead, past this new Papyrus, toward the city they approached. It was still far away, but if he looked very closely, he could make out the shapes and colors of monsters walking around on the streets. Monsters … and humans.

If he looked closer, if he walked further, he might even see people he recognized. Undyne, shouting and throwing things and giving unwanted noogies. Alphys, hiding behind her manga and geeking out about every piece of technology she could find. Asgore, tending to his garden. The lady, whatever the lady looked like, baking the cookies he so often smelled, even through the door, and passing them out to children, human and monster alike.

His eyes shifted back, closer, and again, he saw Papyrus.

A different Papyrus. A new Papyrus. A Papyrus who could never replace the brother he had lost. A Papyrus who would never try.

A Papyrus who had been through things Sans would never truly understand. Who had suffered. Who still saw the good in the world no matter how badly it hurt him.

A Papyrus who looked at Sans with just as much love as he would have given his own brother.

Sans glanced over his shoulder, toward the mountain, toward the spot where the door no longer was. He didn’t know if Ink was watching, if he could see this world from the place, if he made a habit of looking in on others’ lives like watching an evening movie. He didn’t know if he would come to get him, if Sans ever changed his mind and wanted to go back—even if he didn’t have much to go back to.

Maybe he _would_ change his mind in a day, a week, a month. When it sunk in that this wasn’t his world, his friends, his _brother._

Maybe whoever had given him this miracle would get bored again and decide to yank it all away.

But right now … he didn’t care.

Because he wasn’t _this_ Papyrus’s brother either, but this Papyrus wanted him anyway.

He looked at Papyrus, walking a few steps ahead of him, his head held high despite the weight that tried so hard to drag him down. Even at this awkward angle, he could still make out his smile, the light in his eyes. The light that the world had tried so hard to drag away. The light that refused to die.

And very faintly, Sans felt himself smiling back.

Maybe this world wouldn’t last. But maybe it would. There were so many worse worlds, so many ways things could go wrong … but if the universe was infinite, then there were just as many ways that things could go right. For a while, or forever.

Someone had yanked away his happy ending … but someone had also given him another one.

He didn’t know what would happen. He didn’t have any control, and he knew, when he came to his senses, that it would scare the hell out of him. But for now … he would enjoy this. For no matter how long it lasted. He would appreciate his brother like he had failed to do so before. And even if he failed again … even if someone _made_ him fail … then at least he would do whatever he could to protect him.

And maybe … he would even succeed.

Maybe, just maybe, even if it was just in one world out of millions … they could both be happy.


End file.
